


Do Not Look For Me

by CatLovePower



Category: Ghosted (2017)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12430521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: Short tag to episode 103, because that last scene was so great I needed more. Max Jennifer whump/reluctantly protective Leroy Wright.





	Do Not Look For Me

Leroy was still in the waiting area, wondering what the hell he was doing there. He sure was spending a lot of time with someone he didn’t consider a friend. Or maybe Max was the closest thing he had to a partner in years, so he got attached too quickly.  
  
He flicked his wrist and checked the time again. Leaving would be rude; but after all, Max was probably just fine taking the bus before they met. However, if Leroy was perfectly honest, he wanted to know more about that Claire who may or may not have been abducted by aliens. And since Max didn’t have any filter on that babbling mouth of his, staying would ensure that he got the full story firsthand.  
  
He was considering going to get coffee when an alarm started blaring, sending people scuttling around.  
  
“What’s going on?” he asked no one in particular.  
  
“Stay here, sir,” a nurse said, before hurrying behind the nurse station. “There is a patient on the loose,” she told her colleague.  
  
He got up, unsettled. They were not on a case, Max wasn’t his responsibility 24/7, but he couldn’t help it. This insufferable little man had awoken a deep protective streak in him.  
  
Security ran past him. So he followed. No one stops a 6ft2 man who’s stomping with a purpose in the direction of a crisis.  
  
Most of the men ran outside, where the patient has most probably already vanished. One of them was called to open a closed room. Leroy had been made, by now, but still no one told him to back off. One of the guards threw him wary looks from time to time, and the other seemed to pretend he didn’t exist.  
  
“She’s locked it from inside,” he said, gesturing at the door.  
  
“Why weren’t you in there with them?”  
  
“They- they wanted some privacy. I figured they wanted to make out or something,” the guard explained, rather lamely.  
  
“Did she hurt him?”  
  
“I don’t-”  
  
“Move from the door!” Leroy’s booming voice startled them both. After hearing that Max was still in there, possibly injured, he couldn’t just stand by and wait for these incompetent security guards to decide if they wanted to take their job seriously at one point. He was, after all, also security.  
  
He pushed them aside and glanced through the small window on the door. Max was sitting with his back to them, sprawled on the table. Probably not napping. And this made him furious, all of a sudden; he had been, once again, unable to protect a partner from harm. He already felt guilty for nearly strangling him and throwing him off a balcony in Florida – even though Max repetitively said that he was okay.  
  
The door offered some resistance, at first, but it was no match for Leroy’s fury. The legs of the chair blocking the door gave way, and they burst in to find a broken window and glass on the floor. And Max hadn’t flinched during all this.  
  
Leroy approached and gingerly put a hand on his shoulder, but he refrained from shaking him awake. There was blood on the table. Not a lot, but it could mean a busted nose, or worse, a concussion. Memories of first aid class resurfaced, but not clearly enough that he was sure of what he should be doing.  
  
He was still hovering when Max opened his eyes with a gasp. Then he sat straight and looked at the window, then at Leroy, with a bewildered look only made worse by the blood caking his hair and face.  
  
“She’s gone,” he said.  
  
He looked as if he was about to cry, and Leroy fought the urge to run away. Hugging a shaking grown-man was not one of his favorite activities, but he seemed to be doing it a lot these days. But Max sort of just leaned on him for a while, looking at the window with a forlorn face.  
  
They got ushered out of the room and into the ER. People came and asked questions, didn’t got any clear answer, and left quickly, because security was clearly at fault. Max got his head stitched; the bruise was starting to show, red and angry, above his right eye. And all through that he stayed silent, so unlike himself. He should have been freaked, indignant, loud and complaining… Not quiet and compliant.  
  
“What happened in there?” Leroy asked again once they were back in the car, in the parking garage. The same exact question hospital officials asked earlier.  
  
Leroy had to buckle his seat belt for him because his hands were still shaking. Max went to touch the rapidly swelling goose egg on his forehead, but Leroy stopped him.  
  
“Tell me,” he insisted.  
  
“She was...” Max sobbed. “She was so _her_.”  
  
 _Whatever that meant_ , Leroy thought, but he didn’t interrupt. He suddenly felt like the cop he used to be, taking statements and reassuring victims.  
  
“She told me… not to look for her. And then she...” his voice broke. Leroy knew the rest anyway.  
  
“But we are, right? Looking for her,” Leroy asked, while throwing a sideways glance at his partner.  
  
“As soon as everything stops spinning,” Max whined, sounding like his old self again.  
  
“As soon as it stops spinning,” Leroy repeated. He patted him on the knee, then started the engine.


End file.
